Xyster
by Frost Deejn
Summary: Kara Stanton has Mark Snow in her grasp. She wants to know why he tried to have her killed, and she's very good at getting answers.


Xyster

Mark Snow didn't want to die.

He realized this while sitting in a blank room, waiting for Kara Stanton to return. Waiting for hours, in ever-increasing pain.

She'd always been one of the most competent operatives he knew. And hands-down the coldest. A combination that made her exceptionally dangerous.

And considering he'd tried to have her killed, she was now especially dangerous to _him._

He was familiar with hundreds of methods of torture, but whatever she currently had him hooked up to was new to him. His arms, legs, fingers, and head were fitted between metal bars and vices of various sizes, the kinds you could buy at any hardware store, welded to a metal frame.

"I'm sure you're trained to resist torture," Kara had commented while fitting him into it. "That's gonna come in handy for you."

She'd started tightening some of the vices, not all of them, and only a little at a time.

Then his arms and legs began hurting, and his fingers. And then he realized what she was doing: millimeter by millimeter bending his bones to just before the breaking point.

He didn't say anything. He wasn't going to give her the satisfaction.

She tightened the vices just a little more, then left the room.

Over time, the strain on Mark's bones seemed to increase. Maybe there was swelling that was making him feel that way. But as the pain increased, he wondered if his bones could break now, if they could just snap. The vice on his head was starting to give him a pounding headache.

Finally he couldn't take the pain anymore. He screamed.

As if that was her cue (and it probably was), Kara came back in. She loosened the vice on his head, relieving the headache. "Here's how this works," she said, "every time you answer one of my questions, I loosen one of the vices. If you refuse, if you don't cooperate, or if you give me any sass, I tighten one."

"I'm not going to tell you anything."

"That wasn't a question." She tightened the vice on his wrist, just enough to make him scream a little bit.

"First question: what's your name?"

He didn't answer.

She tightened the vice on his left leg.

"Your real name."

"Mark Snow," he groaned.

"Right." She tightened a vice at his shoulder blade.

"Ah!"

"The name you were born with."

"George Quinn, Junior."

She loosened the vice. He relaxed slightly, breathing raggedly.

"Next question. What's your favorite color?"

"Yellow." It was true, but seemed harmless enough.

She loosened the vice at his left ankle.

"Why did you send us to Ordos?"

"I don't know. I wasn't told the details, just the orders."

A vice on his right foot got tighter.

"What do you know?"

He was silent. Until she tightened a vice pulling back his right ring finger. "Ow! What I told you...what I told you was true. A computer program stolen by the Chinese. That's what I was told!"

She loosened the vice.

He glared at her with pure hatred. The pain at various points in his body was becoming excruciating.

"What is the Machine?"

He stared at her.

"One of the Chinese software engineers was still alive when we found him. That's what he called it, the Machine."

"I don't know."

She tightened a vice on his left wrist. When he didn't say anything, she tightened it some more.

"I don't know!" he screamed. "Damn you! Damn you! I don't know!"

She loosened the vice slightly, just to the point where it was no longer threatening to break his wrist. "Next question: why was it so important to send me and John to Ordos? We were the best. Valuable. When we got there, everyone was already dead. Why were we sent on a suicide mission any other team could do?"

"Because everyone who had any knowledge of the package had to be eliminated."

She loosened his wrist some more, bringing immediate relief to the pain.

"That means one of our missions put us in contact with it, or with information about it. It was the man we grabbed in New York, wasn't it? The man we were told sold something to the Chinese. He sold the Machine, didn't he?"

Snow was sweating with pain. He didn't want to tell her the truth, but just thinking about lying made him feel like his bones were beginning to crack. "Yes."

She loosened the vice on his collar bone. "What is the Machine?"

He couldn't tell her, because he didn't know. And if he told her he didn't know, she wouldn't believe him, and would tighten something. "Some kind of computer program. That's all I know!"

"That's all you know?"

"Whatever it is, the government's more interested in keeping it secret than anything else I know of. They never told me what it was."

"The woman, the one we met in Morocco, does she know?"

"I think so," Mark replied.

She loosened another vice. "What's her name?"

"Corwin."

Another got looser. "First name?"

"Alicia."

She released the vice on his left ankle. "Is she the one who told you to kill us?"

"Yes."

Kara looked at him for a moment, not sure if she believed him, then loosened another vice.

"What's the name of the man who sold the Machine to the Chinese?"

He didn't answer.

She tightened a vice. "You told me and John exactly where his limo would be. You provided the corpse matching his description to put in the car to stage the accident. You know his name. Who was he?"

Mark took several deep breaths. The man was dead, he rationalized. There was no harm in telling Kara his name to stop the pain. "Nathan Ingram."


End file.
